Kit Harington shows a lot of skin in first pic from Pompeii

Paul W.S. Anderson’s (Resident Evil, Event Horizon) Pompeii stars Kit Harington (Game of Thrones). As you can see, from what little he is wearing, he is playing a gladiator named Milo.

Here is what Harington had to say about the change in his physique.

The first thing I said to [Paul] was, ‘Look, I’m playing a gladiator. I feel there should be a physical transformation, if he’s as strong as you say in the script. Maybe I should sort of tone up for that?’ So I went into quite a heavy training regime five weeks before filming. I started by bulking up and then when I got out there I had four weeks to shred down and get toned. It’s a full-time job that you have to carry on for the whole of the movie. I was on a very severe diet and training six days a week. It’s the best shape I’ve been in, and I was hell-bent on getting in a certain way. When you get into that sort of training regime, it becomes addictive.

As for the image above:

This is the first scene you see me in. It’s set in London, in fact, and it’s a scene where my character is a gladiator fighting in an arena. That’s his gladiator look. It’s a great little fight against three masked gladiators and sets up who he is and where he’s going. You see me display my skills quite early on. It’s a costume I don’t actually wear for the rest of the film, but it’s an establishing one.

The 3D film, which climaxes with the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Milo is a Celt who is enslaved when he is a child and his family is killed. There’s a time cut that happens in the movie where you see me go from a child to a man, and you realize he’s been a gladiator for a long time. Eventually he’s taken to Pompeii

Once in the bustling city, he falls for a higher-class beauty named Cassia, played by Sucker Punch‘s Emily Browning.